Thursday 28th of March 2024

all in the family...

family

Labor and the crossbench plan to zero in on the awarding of contracts for security services on Manus Island as Senate estimates gets underway today.

Key points:
  • Senators have questioned why the contracts were not awarded to a more established company
  • The government must show due diligence was done in the tender process, crossbenchers say
  • Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said he had "no sight" of the tender process

 

It's the final week of estimates hearings before the federal election, and the answers provided will help shape the debate around border protection in the upcoming election campaign.

More than $420 million over nearly two years is going to a relatively unknown company, the Paladin Group, that was registered to a beach shack on Kangaroo Island and a PO box in Singapore.

"I think the very biggest question to be answered is — how on earth did this tiny unknown company with no track record ever get $423 million in contracts from the Australian taxpayer?" Labor Senator Murray Watt said.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-18/government-to-be-grilled-over-man...

the “can-do” country of innovative cruelty...

Despair breeds profits; disturbances supply opportunity. The genius and venal nature of human nature will always see a possible buck from an impossibly cruel situation. Globally, a study should be done about how many billions goes into the supply of contracts, tenders and sweetheart deals to companies with a hand in the business of stopping and keeping refugees. They are the modern pimps of a distinctly modern market, and it pays to have a series of companies doing the work for governments.

All too often, the traffickers are saddled with the lion’s share of the blame. Ignored are the equally vicious exploiters who find form in privately contracted companies. In some ways, they have even less of a case to make: the right to seek asylum is recognised by the UN Convention on Refugees; the means to facilitate how that is done is a matter that has been seized upon by practitioners in the market.

In Europe, companies such as European Homecare and ORS Service have shown themselves indifferent and, in some cases, openly hostile, to the welfare of inmates and guards. The words of Marie Sallnäs of Stockholm University remain relevant in describing the entire basis of private sector providers when it comes to dealing with refugee arrivals: “cowboys who are only there because they want to make heaps of money.”

Australia storms ahead in these stakes. Its officials pay the very people smugglers they condemn to take their trafficked goods elsewhere; it has fed a security complex that would make its Anglo forefathers proud (think the reaction of the British Empire to the Boers in South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century; think, dare it be said, concentration and concentrated camps).

The “can-do” country of innovative cruelty has been adding a host of ideas to the mix on how best to tackle those incorrigibles arriving by sea. To that end, contracts have been awarded to various outfits with a good patina of near as to be criminality. The contractor Paladin is the most recent upstart in this venture, having received, through a closed-tender process, a range of contracts worth $A423 million for 22 months of work. It had been receiving $A17 million a month to provide security at three refugee centres located on Manus Island.

The company itself has a curious Australian address: 134 Nepean Esplanade, an inconspicuous beach shack on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. It had only registered in Australia a month before winning a $A89 million contract to provide security services. Importantly, Paladin is interested in the grand squeeze, ensuring that the cost for each detainee, minus the actual comfort they receive, exceeds a daily rate twice that for a five-star hotel suite with Sydney Harbour views. In that sense, the Australian tax payer and detainee are given a right royal rogering.

 

Read more:

https://theaimn.com/refugees-as-business-the-paladin-group-contract/

PNG view...

png view

true paladin crimes...

EXCLUSIVE: Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars missing. Bribes. Money Laundering. Mercenaries, Military, Militias. Gina Rinehart’s dead family bodyguard. Swiss bank accounts. Senior politicians and officials in both Australia and PNG involved, or turning a blind eye for years. While one thousand refugees remain trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare. That’s the cost of doing business on Manus Island. Thanks to this terminal Federal Government and Peter Dutton’s shady Paladin. Serkan Ozturk with this deep investigation.

It’s the fast-moving fiasco that could arguably become one of the greatest political and military scandals in Australian history. Regardless, it will go down as yet another deep, dark stain on this country’s failure to provide adequately for the vulnerable. In a special forensic investigation, True Crime News Weekly will help join the dots of what has already become known as the #PaladinAffair. The widening scandal could very well be the final nail in the coffin for Scott Morrison’s deeply unpopular government, as well as perhaps leading to the end of a few careers, starting with Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.

Our investigation will show how a privatised quasi-version of the ADF with links to controversial and maligned mercenary groups such as Blackwater and Sandline International is – along with senior levels of the Australian Government – highly involved in the bribery of foreign officials as well as the laundering of hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars meant to provide basic services for refugees.

WHAT’S THE DEAL

Over the space of the last two years, the Federal Government under the direction of Peter Dutton’s Home Affairs ministerial superagency has quietly awarded almost half-a-billion dollars worth of contracts without tender to one small company led by a man with a string of bad businesses and unpaid debts. The beneficiary has been the little-known Paladin Group. $423 million has been handed over to the private security contracting firm to provide security and other services at the Manus Island detention centre for asylum seekers. They even got a generous helping hand to get things going, with the thinly capitalised company given $10 million from the public purse as Paladin didn’t have any funds itself. For the first five months of the deal, Paladin were operating without a contract for five months. Instead, they just had a letter of intent. 

Almost $110 million of taxpayers funds was given to Paladin on January 3 just after the New Year despite the Federal Government being aware of a serious legal case launched against two of its directors alleging deceptive practices. Meanwhile, one of Paladin’s directors has been banned from entering PNG. While another was arrested just a fortnight ago for his involvement in fraud and money laundering. A former senior employee alleges large “ex-gratia payments” are being made by the company, and that it also lacks the resources to actually fulfil the government’s contract. Before greater media scrutiny over the past few days forced the company into some hasty moves, Paladin’s registered principal place of business was an isolated beach shack on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island, with no phone number or mailing address listed. The beach shack remains the company’s registered address.

SEE THE CONTRACT WITH PALADIN HERE

An investigation by The Australian Financial Review has found Paladin is likely receiving more than $20 million a month from Dutton’s ministry, despite experts estimating the true cost to provide the required services being closer to $3 million each month. That means a clean $17 million each month is basically unaccounted for. Over 18 months, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars. Where is all that money going to?

 

Read more:

https://truecrimenewsweekly.com/the-dark-knights-of-paladin-mercenaries-...

 

I guess the MSM (mediocre "state" media) will be too afraid of tackling the whole lot of this crookery going on. They will poke at it with a long fork as if the beast was dead and write as if there will be better tomorrows, under Scummo... Scummo and Peter Dutton should resign. Dutton should have gone a long time ago. It's time for Malcolm to come clean as well, because this whole mess started under his watch.

paladin, who?

Today from the ABC to the SMH, not a single article on the biggest scandal of them all — the Paladin "contract". It would not surprise an old kook like me that the "main stream media" or "mediocre shit media" or whatever are scared to death of revealing the full truth that's a billion times more horrendously worse than Sam Dastyari handling a Chinese donation... The Paladin affair should bring the Scummo government down all on its own — but it won't of course...

I can only live in hope that the ABC 4 Corners program is doing a behind the scene secret investigation of this affair in which dangerous goons seem to have a foothold — on the Liberal (CONservative) government and its backers... Meanwhile the Murdoch media is doing everything to inflate Scummo's punctured tyres while doing everything to unscrew the wheels of Shorten's advantage, including poopooing Kerryn Phelps... 

Is our media in the pocket of rich dudes protected by dangerous goons?... I can only assume so...

 

Read from top.

 

By the way, Karen Dutton image at top could be bogus, but so far no threat of court case has come forward and the more time passes, the "more true", the image is...

ah, some news about paladin...

after yesterday's silence in the media about Paladin (see comment above), a snippet of (lame-ish) news:

 

Asylum seekers on Manus Island say the security contractor Paladin is “doing nothing” on the ground, questioning how the firm is spending money from its $423m deal with the Australian government.

The Australian government is continuing to face scrutiny for its decision to hand the contracts to run the Manus Island asylum and refugee centres to the contractor Paladin, through a non-competitive tender process.

Paladin had little experience in providing garrison and security services in immigration detention, but the home affairs department has said it was left with little choice but to hand it the contract because others were reluctant to be associated with the “noise” of its offshore detention regime.

Asylum seekers on Manus Island said they had long questioned what the Australian government was paying for, not just through its deal with Paladin, but with all its contractors.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/19/asylum-seekers-sa...

 

 

Read from top. The media silence about the possible crookery of Paladin is deafening...

possibly under secret instruction from kanbra...

Australia's new refugee medical evacuation process could be thwarted under new laws enacted by the Nauruan Government.

Key points:
  • Medical transfers off Nauru must be approved by a new committee and the Health Minister
  • The regulation was introduced within 72 hours of the Australian medical transfer bill passing
  • Refugee supporters fear people are now "held prisoner" on Nauru 

 

The small nation's cabinet approved a change forcing all overseas medical transfers to be approved by a new committee and the country's Health Minister.

The rule explicitly bans transfers where the patient seeks assessment from an overseas-based doctor during the process.

"Individuals who urgently need a medical transfer to Australia from Nauru are now being held prisoner," lawyer George Newhouse said.

"This is a very crude attempt to stymie the legislation that came out of the Australian Parliament last week."

The crackdown was introduced within 72 hours of the Australian Parliament passing a bill to help refugees or asylum seekers travel to Australia for health care.

Under the new Australian law — which is yet to come into force — two doctors must assess the person on Nauru or Manus Island as needing further medical treatment or assessment.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-19/nauru-law-could-threaten-medical-...